The catholic epistle "James" came to orthodoxy late. It was not in the Old Syriac; it didn't enter the Muratorian canon, and Jerome noted that it was disputed as late as his own day. A synod at Laodicea accepted it AD 360 and that's likely about when it started trickling into Latin and Syriac NTs. So far so Beduhn.
Now, the argument-from-silence is rarely a good argument. Take the Gospels - also not extant in Syriac, in those Diatesseronic days. Here out West it's been noted for maybe a century (including this very blog) that we'd find difficult to accept Mark as early, given how thoroughly Matthew supplanted it. My own Church has historically asserted that Mark is later than Matthew. But, pardon my Galileianism - Mark is early. Helmut Koester thought that James behaves like 1 Clement in citing sayings of our Lord from the nebulous "oral tradition", namely not directly from a Gospel. Still. There are some intriguing dogs not barking in this night.
This post will call this author "James" to honour his pseudonym, and to save time; like I have no problem with calling the author of Isaiah 40-55 "Isaiah". Always keeping in mind that we aren't assuming their real names.
Everyone has noticed that James is a nomian; this author approves Torah and (more so) the wisdom-tradition interpretation thereof, from Ben Sira to Dennis Prager. Underappreciated is that this author likes the Septuagint's torah. Even Paul preferred a protoMT text for instance his citation of Jeremiah 16 against the idolaters. Josephus and pseudo-Philo also went with MT-leaning Greek, like when reciting the David / Goliath story. Maybe these Hellenophone Jews were not prepared to do the full Aquila; but certainly they followed the Lucian / kaige / Theodotion revisions. James might have been a Judaeophile but he doesn't read like a post-9-Av Jew.
Also what strikes me is that James doesn't wax on about circumcision, as we'd expect from a contemporary opponent to Paul. James seems to be reacting to a Paul-ism, as might be found amongst, well, the extreme Lutherans. Marcion comes to mind; and that Lucan faction which led to him.
Wikipedia wants me to read James as a followup to 1 Peter. I am less certain James wants us to read him so, contrast 2 Peter with the Apocalypse. James wants us to think he relies upon the "paraenetic tradition" common to the community; as did 1 Clement and probably 1 Peter too.
James 5:10-11 diverges from 1 Peter in suggesting Job (in Greek!) as the model of patience in adversity. As Udo Schnelle has asked - why not Christ. James' church had no crucifix behind its altar. To the extent we are not meditating upon the Cross; we read this sentiment also in 2 Thessalonians and in the Gospel of Thomas.
This bizarre mix of post-Pauline and maybe even post-Lucan controversy, coupled with a paraenesis avoiding ascription to Christ, to my mind is best-resolved as a pseudepigraphy. Someone in the pseudo-Clementine milieu opposed the Paulines and Lucans (although perhaps not Marcion yet), by "anticipating" their antinomianism. This was done by a letter from Jesus' inner circle purporting from when the Lord still lived. The Abgar legend proposes that Jesus Himself corresponded with the court of Edessa Callirrhoë.
The "Epistle of James" does not dare this. But he can certainly piggyback off Jesus' family name. He could base this from the letters he'd read from Paul, which was probably all of them, including the Pastorals. In parallel consider Hegesippus.
UPDATE 3/8 - Thinking this through, I now think we are dealing with a "preëmptive" strike against Marcion. James' defence of Torah-based ethics is really a defence of using the Torah at all. Paul and Luke still own a Bible, their writings making little sense without it; and feel no need to argue the point.
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